1934 – 2025.
Raymond Saunders, a belatedly recognized Bay Area artist who decried the art world’s tendency to pigeonhole Black artists by race even as he produced paintings that actively explored racial subjects, passed away just a few days after his first retrospective at a major museum, in Pittsburgh. “Can’t we get clear of these degrading limitations,” he wrote, “and recognize the wider reality of art where color is the means and not the end?”